From a small spark, kindled in America, a flame has arisen[.] Man ...discovers…that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that, in order to be free, it is sufficient that he wills it. -Thomas Paine
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The sheer imperviousness of the American middle and upper-middle classes to the very idea that every new round of deregulation inevitably causes a financial catastrophe followed by a permanent further increase in the 0.1%'s share of the nation's wealth is an amazing thing.
I think "mismanaged" gives them a benefit of the doubt their words and actions prove they should not receive.
And many will still act as if he's entitled to the benefit of the doubt on whether he meant "in a just world, she would be a white man's slave."
The scene where the mayor lights up a cigarette in the middle of the treatment area of the local E.R. always punches the fourth wall for me, even though I'm so old I myself smoked in hospital halls, semi-private rooms and waiting areas on several occasions.
That's a bold claim to be making in this, the 2,025th year of the Common Era when the inner circle of the president of the United States are playing the old "let's pretend the Emperor/King/Dictator isn't dead or dying until the succession has been secured" game traditional in tyrannies since Trajan.
If only someone had warned us how could we possibly have known.
CARTOON OF THE DAY (From @andertoon.bsky.social )
But Biden, amirite?
You guys see where this is going? Right?
"Lying? On *Elon's* Twitter? Open dissemination of lies so insultingly facile as to suggest an intentional meta-level note of mockery of the intended audience? Impossible!" --Everyone Still on Twitter.
Honestly, at this point I would happily hand the whole country over to Norway.
Golly. Who in the farm states that voted for Trump could possibly have foreseen that their reward would be personal financial disaster? www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbn8...
Okay, now you're just teasing me...
I think he's in the grip of some kind of Führerbunker breakdown.
Where did he get DeSantis' boots?
Saying the "DoJ" is doing this deflects and diffuses responsibility from individuals to an institution being subverted and suborned by them. People who took oaths as attorneys and again as government officials are breaking them and becoming monsters by association if they weren't already there.
Remember when Hillary coughed and the media were practically writing her obituary?
At what discount?
One of those puking incidents that form a core memory.
OTD in 1939 Nazi Germany staged the Gleiwitz incident. After accusing Poland of ethnic cleansing against his countrymen, Hitler staged a false flag to justify invasion & genocide. Imagine such bullshit being tolerated today....
We are to the New York Times.
Don't forget the effacing of inscriptions and carving of new faces into statutes.
Save some time for SEPT 3/25
TBF, the whole Trump regime is filled with people dumber than this and they rule the country. Well, you know, after a fashion.
But Biden, amirite?
No, but this one time when we were kids some unthinking adults left it in reach and told us it was candy and that is our supervillain origin story.
Fulfilling my CLE requirements with a class on traffic stops and did you know that reading this post is consent to a search and also not reading this post is suspicious and thus probable cause for a search and in fact you should have already stopped so you are fleeing so lethal force is okay.
Ah, another day, another new ache dropping in to say "ohai! So, remember that that thing you did when you were young that you thought long-since healed?"
From @markhertling.bsky.social — retired Three Star General, veteran of our modern wars. www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
I am certain that eventually, after their attempt to start a religion flops, they'll install a drain in his shoddily built Mar-a-Lago tomb, put up a rope line and sell tickets to piss on his grave.
And his kids would be trying to monetize it...
I feel like some Guard officer or noncom is engaging in willful mockery of the deployment...
A MAGA Warrior Is Rifling Through Your Mortgage Paperwork talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-mag...
Absolutely all the trollish popular porn stuff about Marie and Friends feels EXTREMELY online-ish to our eyes. But just the whole fevered stew of elite plots and foreign intrigues that existed in the heads of the revolutionaries right alongside all the liberal and Enlightenment stuff.
More or less universally a country seeking to limit foreigners studying in that country is a sign of a society, culture, great power in severe decline.
she said that “black” with a hard r
But the clown *said* he could do it!
The 1970's Brutalist architecture from which the images of the Leader are hanging is what makes it museum-piece perfect. You know, in an exhibition about 20th century totalitarianism. Which I guess we should have done so two generations wouldn't think it was only a bit worse than democracy.
🚨 Yesterday, Arlington, TX (heart of the DFW metropolitan area) had an AMAZING turnout for their ICE recruitment event. ✊🏼
" The point of modern propaganda isn't to misinform or push an agenda.It is to overwhelm critical thinking,to annihilate truth" Garry Kasparov We are living this reality,right now
TBF, that's been going since before the Nicaean Council.
Just a general FYI: I get that the CIA and FBI did some shady and crappy things in the 50s-80s. But if you are using those examples as referents for their (legal) powers *now,* you are showing your ignorance of some major constraints that were placed on them by Congress*
"The oft-mentioned tyranny being opposed by gun owners is really just the sense that the wrong people are encroaching on the privileges and prerogatives of whiteness." From 2020:
The usual protocol when dictators go mad is for the inner circle to quietly scramble for power and sycophant even harder while waiting for him to do something so grossly evident of incapacity that the problem solves itself.
I feel that.
Also the guiltlessly walking away once you've gotten what you wanted...
As soon as I heard, I said "so they can bet a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, but not a guy with a sandwich." And then the regret of knowing with total certainty that I was hours too late with the punch line.
*Results may not be typical. Check skin color and political party before applying.
A lot of people can't seem to accept that what is happening in the US is not complicated. Stopping it is complicated. The psychology that's letting it continue is complicated. But the thing itself is incredibly simple.
Hello, Lloyd's? Would you kindly write me a marine insurance policy for my cargo ship which I intend to sail into a port in occupied territory in a hot war zone? Hello? Hello?
Be very careful burning Confederate flags. Nylon Confederate flags will drip large blobs of burning goo that stick to skin. Your best burning choice is 100% cotton untreated with flame retardants. Lighter fluid may be used as an accelerant with due precautions but do not use gasoline.
Yes. I understand you think that's all true. Thanks.
See, this is the part where we each need to recognize that the other is so deeply invested in their own world view as to seem delusional to the other and walk away.
Except, see, I was talking about an uncompelled choice between democracy and fascism in a legitimate election where the fascist candidate promised to grant Netanyahu carte blanche. To me that somehow seems categorically different from a sadistic moral trap Nazis sprung on powerless victims.
Call me crazy, but I'm not actually interested in discussing that in the middle of a social media argument with people who think I must be a monster because they're the good guys.
The part where you choose to strawman me into a supporter of genocide kinda is.
Well, yeah. Because the oligarchs the left ostensibly opposes spent decades, and vast sums of money, poisoning their minds (and turning a profit in the process, of course). So where's the logic in helping them elect a psychopath who promised to give Netanyahu carte blanche?
Yeah, right there. That's what I'm talking about. Thanks.
So, I guess that's a "no" then?
Well, I learned a bit about game theory math. And turns out that in an election where there are only two candidates who have a chance of winning, there is no mathematical difference between voting third party and casting 1/2 of a vote for the competitive candidate you least want to win.
You guys really do just have the weirdest ideas about what democracy is and how it works.
Do you ever step back and consider how this exact kind of Manichean othering is at the root of the things you claim to vociferously oppose?
You guys have the weirdest ideas about democracy. You can't seem to decide if it's an economic transaction or an extortion racket.
Yes, everyone who disagrees with you is for genocide. You are pure and a very good person who is in no way at fault for the way things are while everyone else is just the ultimate incarnation of evil.
Nothing. Because people whose immaculate consciences called for making things worse voted against her.
The mental health benefits of not knowing any history right now must be massive. Moving through your day with total equanimity. What happens next? Who knows? Maybe something good
So sensitive.
And look at all he accomplished!
It's about time we got the corrupt Big Pharma bureaucrats and know-it-all "scientists" out of the way and gave people back the choice of benefitting from the healthful, healing power of radium-based drinks and suppositories again.
Adults learn that when the actual choice is between "bad with a slim chance of getting better" and "worse and doomed to get worse still," picking the latter as a symbolic gesture against the lack of less shitty choices is narcissistic and immoral, actshully.
Boy, there sure are a lot more lefties who didn't vote for Harris whinging about how nothing happening is their fault and blaming everyone but themselves than usual out today. Just my timeline or has something in particular triggered this latest spasm of guilty denial?
Watch what Dem politicians saw about this. This is a purported firing. It’s illegal. Treating it as real signals weakness.
Oh boy, you sure told me. Wait until you tell the other guys at how you owned me at the next PFJ meeting.
Are those people in the room with us?
This is the rhetoric of dictators — across time & geography — that freedom (for some) must be sacrificed for security, reinforcing the power of the regime. Instead of engaging in fights about crime rates, the opposition to this madness needs to hammer on this authoritarian frame over & over again.
I don't understand how any of this could be happening! Susan assured us he'd learned his lesson!
His extreme co-morbid Cluster B personality disorders, of course. Just like psychologists and psychiatrists have been warning us would be the case for a decade now, to the eyerolling scoffing of all the Very Serious People.
Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
And, among the things that could happen now, disbarment by whatever states licensed them.
I'm sure you find this deeply meaningful.
Obviously he means the government will be paying us 14-15 times the manufacturer's price on drugs to take them.
And look how much better things are now. Thanks.
But we thought the Fed was a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in a distinct historical tradition? 🧐🧐🧐
We shouldn’t trust a thing that lying sex trafficker says, all so she can get an easier sentence or even a pardon.
Probably not, to be honest. The only constant of history is the failure-and more often than not, absolute refusal-of most people to learn from history.
Here's the problem - the right make up a story and the media plaster it everywhere. The left tell a true story and the media ignore it. The right hasn't actually 'hijacked' anything. The right have been given an open door while the left - the majority - are barricaded away.
Michaels: I have not had one single invite from a conservative news outlet. I have family members saying to me, “Well, why aren’t you talking to Megyn Kelly? Why aren’t you getting out there on Fox?” They’re not asking.
He's the Democratic Reagan. Same Hollywood communications skillset and nearly cartoonishly good profile and hair. Same gift of gab. But being the Democratic franchise reboot, he's younger, smarter and ideologically diffuse. Unfortunate it arives as the presidency is degenerating into Caesarism...
"Unfortunately, the Senate refused to act on it" is a weird way of saying "Unfortunately, Senate Republicans blocked it."
Especially after one's entire pre-retirement academic training and professional career come to feel like a self-inflicted Cassandra curse.
stop calling everything a distraction youtube.com/shorts/yyFjN...
Only every day.
I grew up during the Cold War. I've seen my share of Red Scare hysteria But the NYC billionaires' freakout over Mamdaniis is hilarious. It's like they think he'll send them to the wall and seize the investment banks and P.E .firms. Which, though fun to think about, is absolutely not going to happen.
the #ZcavengerHunt is apparently so popular that campaign staff have run out of the cards you’re supposed to get stamped at each location, which means that tomorrow the NYT & the Post will definitely have headlines about how Mamdani is already overwhelmed & failing to meet the needs of New Yorkers
They are gaslighting an "alternative facts" Epstein narrative into existence to contradict the testimony and physical evidence that necessarily targets , just as they did with Sandy Hook and Uvalde, and 1/6 Except this time it's the state doing it.
Okay, I know. Comcast. Things you aren't seeing on *American* oligarch-owned media, anyway.
The things you aren't seeing on oligarch-owned media...